Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► from relay FM this is upgrade episode number 77 today's show

00:00:13 ◼   ► is brought to you by pdf pen from smile mail route

00:00:17 ◼   ► and fresh books my name is mike early and i'm joined by

00:00:21 ◼   ► mr jason snell hi mike it is you sound fresh

00:00:25 ◼   ► Today. I feel good today. I'm completely mended.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Oh good, it's good. I'm glad that you're feeling

00:00:33 ◼   ► fine. It's a good thing. We've got an action-packed show today.

00:00:37 ◼   ► We do, there's a lot. There's a lot to cover.

00:00:40 ◼   ► So much so that we have things in the document that we already kicked out

00:00:44 ◼   ► till next week, so it's one of those. One of those weeks.

00:00:48 ◼   ► But we should start off with some follow-up.

00:00:51 ◼   ► I see a very proud note here at the top. Well, I mean,

00:00:55 ◼   ► I didn't think that Marcel Proust was going to come up on the podcast, but it did, and

00:01:01 ◼   ► you thought it was more like Dave Prowse, who played Darth Vader, than Marcel Proust.

00:01:06 ◼   ► You know, I think that was genuinely where I was getting that pronunciation from.

00:01:09 ◼   ► I think so. I think so, but several people said that it's Proust. So, there you go.

00:01:15 ◼   ► That's what several people say that I'm right. Who am I to argue?

00:01:20 ◼   ► I have found that when people say you are right on the internet, you should embrace

00:01:24 ◼   ► it and run with it.

00:01:25 ◼   ► Yeah, just say yes. Thank you. Yes. Great. We did learn something, though, from listener

00:01:30 ◼   ► Gordon. We learned a word about a word.

00:01:34 ◼   ► So if you remember last week, I was saying I liked the name "Colossal" and said that

00:01:38 ◼   ► it had a sound to it, which made it sound big, but it's obviously not onomatopoeia,

00:01:43 ◼   ► and listener Gordon wrote in to say that that is called an "ideophone" when a word sounds

00:01:48 ◼   ► like its meaning as opposed to the action of the word, for example, with onomatopoeia.

00:01:54 ◼   ► So thank you very much, Gordon, for that little tidbit of information.

00:01:58 ◼   ► Yeah, that was... For all I know, I didn't check on listener Gordon. He may have made

00:02:03 ◼   ► that word up, but it sounds great. So I'm gonna say yes. That's, again, thank you. That's

00:02:08 ◼   ► awesome. It does colossal. It's amazing and colossal. Somebody wrote in, a few people

00:02:14 ◼   ► wrote in and asked about the daily Kindle newspaper that I mentioned. They're like,

00:02:19 ◼   ► "Oh, I'm intrigued. What's that all about?" And the answer is, "It's my local paper. It's

00:02:22 ◼   ► the San Francisco Chronicle." And I get it because I want to know what's going on locally.

00:02:27 ◼   ► I don't read it every day. I sort of go in -- there are times when I read it and times

00:02:30 ◼   ► where I don't read it, sort of in cycles. But when my favorite sports teams are in action,

00:02:37 ◼   ► I'm more likely to read it because they've got the articles about the sports. It's funny,

00:02:41 ◼   ► newspapers, actually, because I've got a Kindle voyage. I love them, actually. They're super

00:02:48 ◼   ► simple. It's text with like a single picture on some articles, you know, black and white,

00:02:53 ◼   ► obviously, because the device is black and white. If you read on the iPad, they're in color.

00:02:56 ◼   ► But it's just, there's no fancy layout. There are no ads. They are, you can navigate by article. So

00:03:03 ◼   ► if you don't want to read a particular article, you just sort of swipe up and you go to the next

00:03:07 ◼   ► article, you can bring up a table of contents and jump to a different article. They're actually

00:03:12 ◼   ► pretty great and they're pretty cheap actually if you compare them to your, you know, digital

00:03:17 ◼   ► subscription to a newspaper that lets you see it on the web or in an iPad app or something

00:03:23 ◼   ► like that. And I'm really dreading the day that the Chronicle says we're not going to

00:03:28 ◼   ► do the Kindle newspaper anymore if that ever comes to pass because they want to force me

00:03:32 ◼   ► into their iPad app, which they just recently updated and it's actually much better than

00:03:35 ◼   ► it was because their iPad app up until about two months ago was the one that essentially

00:03:40 ◼   ► it's the one that came out when the iPad came out or a few months later where they're like,

00:03:44 ◼   ► "Oh, newsstand is a thing and we'll build this thing." And it was very old. And the

00:03:50 ◼   ► new one is better, but still it's like it brings you a big like grid of stories and

00:03:56 ◼   ► you have to tap around and there's no just list of here's what we want you to read now

00:04:00 ◼   ► or read today, and it's got ads in it all over the place,

00:04:05 ◼   ► and it costs more.

00:04:07 ◼   ► And I'd rather read on Kindle--

00:04:08 ◼   ► read text on a Kindle than on an iPad, honestly.

00:04:12 ◼   ► So yeah, it's one of those things

00:04:16 ◼   ► that I don't know how many people actually even do

00:04:18 ◼   ► Kindle newspapers anymore, but I kind of like it.

00:04:21 ◼   ► That's exactly what I want in something like that,

00:04:24 ◼   ► is I want a bundle of news, in this case locally relevant

00:04:27 ◼   ► to me dropped on one of my devices once a day in a fairly simple text format that I

00:04:32 ◼   ► can read. And the Kindle newspaper subscription actually does that, so I still do that. And

00:04:38 ◼   ► yeah, so I know it's kind of old school and if anything in an e-book reader can be old

00:04:44 ◼   ► school, this might be it.

00:04:45 ◼   ► Do you kind of read it every day still, the newspaper?

00:04:49 ◼   ► No, I don't read it every day. I read it, you know, I read it, like I said, it's more

00:04:53 ◼   ► likely when my sports teams are in season because I want to read those pieces, although

00:04:57 ◼   ► sometimes I've already read them on LinkTube from the Twitter accounts of the writers.

00:05:04 ◼   ► Also it's frustrating the Kindle stuff is not tied into their subscriber database, so

00:05:08 ◼   ► they have some subscriber features like you can read this if you're a subscriber, you

00:05:11 ◼   ► can read this on the web now, but otherwise you'll need to wait until tomorrow morning

00:05:14 ◼   ► to read it. And I can't read those because I'm not a subscriber in that way, I'm not

00:05:19 ◼   ► in that database. So sometimes I'll read it, it really is like if the spirit moves me,

00:05:24 ◼   ► And I do get in these cycles where I'm reading the paper every day and then other times where

00:05:28 ◼   ► I'll go a week or two and I just I haven't read it at all.

00:05:33 ◼   ► Huh.

00:05:34 ◼   ► Yeah, it depends on what I'm reading and what else I'm doing and sort of just how the time

00:05:38 ◼   ► of my life is.

00:05:39 ◼   ► If I'm reading a book, I'm less likely to read that on the Kindle because I'm reading

00:05:44 ◼   ► the book.

00:05:45 ◼   ► And if I'm going to pick up the Kindle and do some reading, I'm going to do it.

00:05:48 ◼   ► Also depends on what's going on in Twitter and Slack and email because that's one of

00:05:53 ◼   ► my morning routines. We should talk about routines at some point, but one of my morning

00:05:57 ◼   ► routines is I get up and I feed the dog and I pour some tea that's been made by the automatic

00:06:03 ◼   ► tea machine and I make myself some breakfast and I check Slack and email and Twitter and

00:06:11 ◼   ► basically if there's not as much going on there then I will move on to the newspaper.

00:06:16 ◼   ► Whilst we're talking about news, I just wanted to touch on something real quick. Now, I've

00:06:21 ◼   ► mentioned this in many places that I actually try and actively avoid big news stories and

00:06:26 ◼   ► things like that like I just don't keep up with the news through choice but I have been

00:06:31 ◼   ► checking out the Quartz app quite simply because it is fantastic it's the best take on news

00:06:39 ◼   ► I've ever seen effectively this app it's it's a iPhone app I'll put a link in our show notes

00:06:47 ◼   ► It basically treats news reporting like an iMessage conversation.

00:06:53 ◼   ► So it sends you little snippets, it's laid out like a message conversation with bubbles,

00:06:58 ◼   ► and it sends you little snippets, little headlines or whatever, and then you can ask for more

00:07:03 ◼   ► information about it.

00:07:04 ◼   ► They have the replies that you can send the Quartz app a display to in little buttons

00:07:08 ◼   ► so you can say like "give me more about this" or "tell me the next story" and they send

00:07:12 ◼   ► charts, they send silly GIFs and stuff like that like you're actually having a conversation

00:07:17 ◼   ► and it treats it like it's a real conversation like it greets you good morning and stuff

00:07:22 ◼   ► like that and it has a really great, I think it's fantastic the way that it does ads so

00:07:28 ◼   ► when you're done with all the news stories it'll be like oh we're you know there's nothing

00:07:32 ◼   ► more now we'll maybe let you know things later oh and by the way it's brought to you by mini

00:07:37 ◼   ► and then they should just show a picture of a mini.

00:07:39 ◼   ► It's just like little things like that is really good and it has notifications but the

00:07:43 ◼   ► notifications don't buzz or play sound on your phone unless it's huge huge news

00:07:49 ◼   ► and you can choose what you want on and off but even when it sends you

00:07:54 ◼   ► the message so it's sending you new messages it shows the little animation

00:07:59 ◼   ► of that like in iMessages with the bouncing balls which it doesn't need to

00:08:03 ◼   ► do that because it's not thinking but I love that it does that because it makes

00:08:07 ◼   ► it feel more alive it's a very very interesting app and that's the main

00:08:11 ◼   ► reason I'm looking at it because it's designed in a way that I haven't seen before, especially

00:08:16 ◼   ► for an application that does what it does. So I think it's worth at least just checking

00:08:21 ◼   ► out. So there you go.

00:08:23 ◼   ► All right.

00:08:24 ◼   ► Let's let Kathy indulge herself with a pineapple and pepperoni pizza.

00:08:30 ◼   ► Yeah, so it's funny. We talked about pizza. That was something that we talked about in

00:08:35 ◼   ► Ask Upgrade last week. And I mentioned my love, again, that some people are horrified

00:08:40 ◼   ► by for pepperoni pineapple pizza, which is just Canadian—it's a Hawaiian pizza without

00:08:44 ◼   ► the Canadian bacon and pepperoni instead, if you want to think of it that way. If you

00:08:48 ◼   ► want to try to make it fit into your boxes of pizza instead of just letting it be free

00:08:53 ◼   ► like pizza should be. Ooh, free pizza, yay! So we talked about it, and that was last week,

00:09:01 ◼   ► and then I went out to lunch with David Sparks after the show, because I was down in Orange

00:09:07 ◼   ► County where he lives. And we get to one of these, it's like a brew pub, it's got this

00:09:12 ◼   ► enormous menu. It's the kind of menu where there's like a table of contents because there's

00:09:15 ◼   ► so many things on the menu. And I ended up seeing that they had pizza and I thought,

00:09:20 ◼   ► you know what? I had a pepperoni pineapple pizza and it was delicious and I tweeted pictures

00:09:25 ◼   ► of it. And then, so thank you for that, for the inspiration. And then yes, listener Kathy

00:09:30 ◼   ► also took a picture of a--although hers had like a pineapple ring on it, which I think

00:09:37 ◼   ► is maybe--

00:09:38 ◼   ► It didn't look like the pineapple had been cooked.

00:09:39 ◼   ► I think, well, you don't really cook the pineapple--I mean, you bake it with a pizza, so it gets

00:09:45 ◼   ► sort of softer.

00:09:46 ◼   ► Sure.

00:09:47 ◼   ► But you don't--but yeah, it looked like kind of a pineapple ring had been plopped down

00:09:51 ◼   ► on it. I'm not sure that is ideal, but still, whatever, it's pineapple and pepperoni. It's

00:09:55 ◼   ► It's going to be good anyway.

00:09:57 ◼   ► So thank you, at least somebody has gotten the word about pepperoni pineapple pizza.

00:10:03 ◼   ► Thank you, listener Kathy.

00:10:04 ◼   ► Okay, so what else do we have before we round up follow-up this week?

00:10:10 ◼   ► Well the other big thing is my task management philosophy or lack of saying that we talked

00:10:16 ◼   ► about a lot.

00:10:17 ◼   ► I really enjoyed having that conversation.

00:10:19 ◼   ► I thought that was fun to break from the, you know, rehashing the news of the day and

00:10:24 ◼   ► get some topical, you know, stuff in that's a little bit different. I thought that was

00:10:28 ◼   ► fun. We should try to do that more. And what I heard from a lot of people was that they

00:10:34 ◼   ► are still struggling with trying to find a system that works for them or struggling that

00:10:38 ◼   ► any system they try doesn't seem to work for them, which is, boy, I hear that. That is

00:10:43 ◼   ► definitely something that I identify with. So I just wanted to say, you know, we're all

00:10:50 ◼   ► just kind of not everybody can have their problems solved by some of these systems and

00:10:56 ◼   ► you can either give up or you can just keep trying or you can build your own system. I

00:11:01 ◼   ► was encouraged by the number of people I found to sort of feel like me that any time invested

00:11:06 ◼   ► in categorizing your to-dos is time you could spend doing things. And I totally understand

00:11:15 ◼   ► the other argument there, which is that no, you're investing in organizations so that

00:11:18 ◼   ► it will pay off with more productivity later. I totally understand that, but it's been a

00:11:24 ◼   ► difficult thing for me to deal with. So it was nice to hear from people who also have

00:11:27 ◼   ► have felt that way. And then I came across a post by Dr. Drang about, and this was a

00:11:36 ◼   ► conversation that actually happened in the incomparable Slack channel, I think Lisa Schmeiser

00:11:41 ◼   ► and Dr. Drang were talking about this, the writing things down on paper. You'll like

00:11:49 ◼   ► this, it involves pens. And what Dr. Drang wrote this post, and we'll link it to it in

00:11:55 ◼   ► the show notes that it's called "Putting the Paper in Task Paper." And he uses Task Paper

00:12:03 ◼   ► as his organizational system, the app Task Paper, but what he does is he prints it. So

00:12:13 ◼   ► he prints the to-do list out of Task Paper, and then he can take notes, he puts it in

00:12:17 ◼   ► a binder, he can take notes, he can check things off, and then he, it sounds like he

00:12:22 ◼   ► checks them off in the app at the end of the day, and the next day he'll print a new one.

00:12:29 ◼   ► David: This is a good system, because I, believe it or not, tend to disagree with having a

00:12:36 ◼   ► completely analog task management system, mainly for the fear of losing it.

00:12:44 ◼   ► Tim: Right, right. So this keeps it around. I mean, what he says is he doesn't want to

00:12:48 ◼   ► rewrite the ones that are still on there. He doesn't want to go and copy them to a new

00:12:54 ◼   ► list. So this keeps a clean list every day. Although what Lisa said is she finds that

00:12:59 ◼   ► she does tasks. I thought this was really interesting. So many games that you can play

00:13:02 ◼   ► with your own mind, right? She does tasks sometimes because she doesn't want to have

00:13:07 ◼   ► to copy them to the next day's to-do list.

00:13:09 ◼   ► - That's a pretty great system.

00:13:12 ◼   ► - Which is brilliant too. So there's a lot of ways to go here. But I think that Dr. Drang's

00:13:17 ◼   ► system is very interesting, and this is very Dr. Drang, actually, I feel, is he's got a

00:13:21 ◼   ► technological system that leads to paper. And I think that's kind of a cool idea, right?

00:13:28 ◼   ► If it works for you and it works for him, that he's using an organizational app, task

00:13:32 ◼   ► paper, to build these to-do lists, but then he's printing them out and putting them in

00:13:37 ◼   ► his binder and he's got his pencil and he's checking things off and writing things down.

00:13:42 ◼   ► And then at the end of the day, he, or the beginning of the next day, I'm not sure, he

00:13:46 ◼   ► kind of reracks and does it again.

00:13:48 ◼   ► - It's an excellent system indeed.

00:13:51 ◼   ► - And you can use a pen with it.

00:13:53 ◼   ► - Which I love.

00:13:54 ◼   ► - I know, I know things about you.

00:13:58 ◼   ► I had one other entry and this goes way back

00:14:00 ◼   ► to when we talked about Back to the Future II

00:14:02 ◼   ► on Myke at the Movies.

00:14:04 ◼   ► And I just wanted to put a link

00:14:06 ◼   ► and we'll put a link in the show notes to it.

00:14:07 ◼   ► Todd Vizzeri who works at Industrial Light and Magic,

00:14:11 ◼   ► they do, he did the, among other things,

00:14:14 ◼   ► he did that shot of the TIE fighters

00:14:15 ◼   ► coming out of the sunset in The Force Awakens.

00:14:19 ◼   ► Pretty amazing stuff.

00:14:23 ◼   ► But he sent a link out to this article

00:14:25 ◼   ► that was in Starlog Magazine in the '80s

00:14:29 ◼   ► that I just wanted to share.

00:14:31 ◼   ► It's pretty cool.

00:14:32 ◼   ► It is, you gotta read it on like archive.org

00:14:34 ◼   ► and a scan from the article.

00:14:35 ◼   ► But it's interesting because it'll make you think

00:14:38 ◼   ► about Back to the Future a little bit differently

00:14:40 ◼   ► and how the time travel works in it.

00:14:42 ◼   ► And basically, I'm not sure I entirely agree

00:14:45 ◼   ► with the theory, but it's really interesting. The idea of if Marty changes the past, spoilers

00:14:50 ◼   ► by the way for Back to the Future, a movie that came out 31 years ago. If Marty changes

00:14:56 ◼   ► the past so that his family's got a nicer house and his dad's not a, not a unsuccessful

00:15:01 ◼   ► nerd but is a successful nerd and he's got a better truck and all those things, that's

00:15:07 ◼   ► what happens at the end of Back to the Future. The question is, who's the Marty who grew

00:15:12 ◼   ► up in that family. Like, if you believe that you're creating like a parallel universe

00:15:19 ◼   ► with time travel rather than just rewriting it, there must have been a Marty who grew

00:15:23 ◼   ► up in that life. And that isn't our Marty. Our Marty didn't grow up in that life. He

00:15:27 ◼   ► grew up in a different life. And so it takes that and it runs with it and suggests that

00:15:32 ◼   ► there's a second Marty who grew up in that life who travels, who also is working with

00:15:37 ◼   ► Doc Brown, but his Doc Brown doesn't know about meeting Marty in the past. Or, no, his

00:15:42 ◼   ► Doc Brown knows about meeting Marty in the past, right? Whereas Marty's Doc Brown doesn't

00:15:46 ◼   ► know. Anyway, and it goes from there, and basically the suggestion is that that Marty

00:15:51 ◼   ► ends up in the first Marty's timeline, which is terrible because in that timeline, Doc

00:15:56 ◼   ► Brown has been shot to death, and his parent, he doesn't have the truck, he just has the

00:16:01 ◼   ► skateboard in his parents' house, he's ratty and ramshackly, and his dad is kind of a failure.

00:16:06 ◼   ► So they swap. Now I'm not sure I buy that entirely, but it is a fascinating idea that

00:16:11 ◼   ► there has to be a second Marty who grew up in that timeline, and where does he go? Now

00:16:15 ◼   ► maybe he goes to a third timeline. But the idea there is that when he travels back in

00:16:19 ◼   ► --

00:16:20 ◼   ► Maybe they landed the DeLorean on top of it.

00:16:21 ◼   ► Well, so no, the idea is, I think, that when he goes back in time, his Doc Brown is prepared

00:16:26 ◼   ► because his Doc Brown met the original Marty. And so he probably, he says to Marty, "Don't

00:16:32 ◼   ► change history, don't tell anybody. He goes, he has extra plutonium to use in the time

00:16:43 ◼   ► machine to get back, because Doc Brown knows what's going to happen. And he doesn't hit

00:16:48 ◼   ► the tree that they knocked over because they knocked it over in the first movie. So they

00:16:52 ◼   ► go back and I think that's the idea is basically that Marty doesn't change history. He just

00:16:57 ◼   ► goes back to the present, finds Doc dead, and that his parents now live in this worse

00:17:03 ◼   ► house and he doesn't have his truck anymore. And that's good luck, Marty. And that's the

00:17:07 ◼   ► end of his movie that we don't see. Anyway, it's a cool theory. And I wanted to share

00:17:13 ◼   ► it. So thanks to Todd for, he said that he used to read that article like over and over

00:17:18 ◼   ► and over again as a kid trying to understand the wiggly-ness of time travel. So it's fun,

00:17:24 ◼   ► fun theory.

00:17:25 ◼   ► Thank you for sharing that. I feel bad for Marty too now. I feel very bad for him.

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00:19:43 ◼   ► Jason, there is a story that we must talk about.

00:19:48 ◼   ► Yeah we must.

00:19:49 ◼   ► Because I don't know if we'd be able to get away with it otherwise and that is the Federal

00:19:55 ◼   ► Bureau of Investigation and Apple Incorporated.

00:19:59 ◼   ► The little interesting scenario that's going on right now.

00:20:02 ◼   ► So about a week ago this all came to light because Tim Cook published an open letter

00:20:09 ◼   ► over on Apple.com.

00:20:10 ◼   ► Now this, so far, I think has been spoken about and written about everywhere that technology

00:20:17 ◼   ► is spoken about or written about.

00:20:19 ◼   ► Yes. And will continue to be. And it changes just since I put this in the document last

00:20:25 ◼   ► night, which just for appearing behind the scenes about my enthusiasm of us diving into

00:20:32 ◼   ► this topic is the topic actually I literally typed, "I guess we need to talk about this,

00:20:37 ◼   ► But since I typed that in, the FBI director posted on a blog about national security,

00:20:47 ◼   ► basically saying, "No, no, no. This is just one thing that we're doing, and it's fine.

00:20:54 ◼   ► So you should let us do it." And then Congress can pass laws that outlaw encryption later.

00:21:01 ◼   ► Right? "All right. Let's do it." And then Tim Cook this morning did a letter to Apple

00:21:06 ◼   ► employees and they posted an FAQ about Apple's take on this issue too. So this is moving

00:21:12 ◼   ► fast. It's not just that everybody's talking about it, but it's also happening at a rapid

00:21:17 ◼   ► rate. There's quite an impressive kind of war of PR happening between Apple and the

00:21:23 ◼   ► United States government.

00:21:25 ◼   ► David: I'm going to actually put a link in the show notes to a great roundup of links

00:21:32 ◼   ► and articles over at MacStories.

00:21:35 ◼   ► They have a bunch of notable things in there,

00:21:37 ◼   ► so you can go and check all that stuff out.

00:21:39 ◼   ► Now, basically, my feeling on this is

00:21:42 ◼   ► there is no point in us going back and telling this story.

00:21:46 ◼   ► Again, you can go and read the articles if you want to.

00:21:49 ◼   ► But there were just a couple of parts

00:21:51 ◼   ► that I wanted to talk about,

00:21:53 ◼   ► which were, which felt important to me.

00:21:57 ◼   ► And if you wanna throw anything in that you can.

00:22:01 ◼   ► The thing is this topic is very messy, it's very complicated and as Jason mentioned it

00:22:06 ◼   ► is still changing and it's changing at a rapid pace.

00:22:09 ◼   ► And I think that really the best thing for us to do will be to come back to this when

00:22:14 ◼   ► the situation develops to a resolution.

00:22:16 ◼   ► Which is going to be over the next couple of months and there may be big things that

00:22:20 ◼   ► happen over the next few weeks but I don't think it's worth us spending an hour today

00:22:25 ◼   ► going through the whole thing.

00:22:27 ◼   ► So one of the things that I wanted to just touch upon is being in the United Kingdom

00:22:33 ◼   ► and how this affects me.

00:22:34 ◼   ► I was going to say.

00:22:36 ◼   ► Because this isn't spoken about a lot, right, because a lot of the news and a lot of the

00:22:40 ◼   ► articles are generated in the US.

00:22:43 ◼   ► Now there is a lot of outrage in the US about this of course because, you know, if the FBI

00:22:47 ◼   ► does something, sets a precedent and, you know, and that's a problem there.

00:22:51 ◼   ► But there's also the potential which Apple references is like, you know, once this software

00:22:55 ◼   ► is created, once this version of iOS is created, it could find its way into the world. That

00:23:02 ◼   ► is a risk, there can be a lot of things put into place to try and stop that, but we don't

00:23:07 ◼   ► know how this is going to develop. For example if the FBI get it, and the FBI have this software

00:23:12 ◼   ► because a court orders them to and that's how it ends up being, it could leak out. There

00:23:17 ◼   ► is a possibility of that. And then anyone in the world can have it.

00:23:21 ◼   ► in the United Kingdom, or also just quickly, if the government mandates that Apple need

00:23:27 ◼   ► to change the way that iOS works and it's like it can't be this secure anymore or whatever,

00:23:32 ◼   ► we don't really know how this is going to continue. So this is another example of, and

00:23:36 ◼   ► this happens a lot, and this is probably going to upset some people but I'm going to say

00:23:39 ◼   ► it anyway, of for some reason the United States of America thinking that they run the entire

00:23:45 ◼   ► world and can make decisions that impact everyone. Being outside of the US we feel

00:23:53 ◼   ► a lot of this kind of stuff that companies are told they need to do

00:23:57 ◼   ► things or that things have you know laws are being put in place that would change

00:24:01 ◼   ► everyone and this is another one of those types of things. I'm in the UK why

00:24:06 ◼   ► should my security be implicated because of a US law and that is potentially how

00:24:14 ◼   ► this is going to run unless what I hope would happen is that there would then be

00:24:17 ◼   ► multiple versions of iOS some are in the US and some are outside because at least

00:24:22 ◼   ► where we are at the moment in the European Union the European Union tends

00:24:26 ◼   ► to have more of a like harsher line on these types of things I think and I can

00:24:33 ◼   ► be corrected if I'm wrong but at least I feel that way now the United Kingdom has

00:24:37 ◼   ► its own problems and we have our own stupid laws but they don't really seem

00:24:41 ◼   ► to affect the wider world as much. And this one is just being outside of it and looking

00:24:46 ◼   ► in, it's very frustrating to me that all of this is happening and that there are potential

00:24:52 ◼   ► ramifications for everyone rather than people that are just in the US.

00:24:57 ◼   ► Yeah, it's true. I mean, if you look at it on a broad scale, like just looking at Apple's

00:25:02 ◼   ► financials, the US is its biggest market. They feel that China is going to be its biggest

00:25:07 ◼   ► market. The European market is roughly, I think, where the Chinese market is right now.

00:25:13 ◼   ► It's a huge market. And so you've got these three entities whose markets are vitally important

00:25:18 ◼   ► to Apple's business present and future. And all of them have an impact, right? I mean,

00:25:24 ◼   ► Apple is an American company, and so what the U.S. government wants to have them do,

00:25:29 ◼   ► it definitely has a huge impact. But we've seen examples in the past where the EU has

00:25:34 ◼   ► thrown its weight around and made companies behave in certain ways. And sometimes those

00:25:42 ◼   ► have ramifications worldwide because you don't want to have three different products in three

00:25:46 ◼   ► different places. And China is the same way, although, I mean, one of the things is there's

00:25:51 ◼   ► nothing stopping China from demanding certain things of Apple other than the fact that it

00:25:55 ◼   ► is difficult for Apple to comply with them. But if Apple is changing its strategy to open

00:26:01 ◼   ► up cracks because it needs to for the FBI or for the Justice Department or for the NSA

00:26:08 ◼   ► or for whoever in the US government, then those cracks are open and then China can say,

00:26:14 ◼   ► "Well, we want that too. We know it exists and if you want to do business in our country,

00:26:19 ◼   ► you will give us access to that stuff too." And so that's part of it is if once you engineer

00:26:24 ◼   ► that thing in, the place that has the most leverage forces you to engineer it in and

00:26:28 ◼   ► then everybody else says, "Well, yeah, I want that too." So, I mean, yeah, it's a mess.

00:26:32 ◼   ► There's so many different things going on here. It's highly technical when you're talking

00:26:35 ◼   ► about encryption. There are legal issues. And then there are these cases where there

00:26:39 ◼   ► are ramifications way beyond specific issues because it does impact every, you know, potentially

00:26:45 ◼   ► every Apple product sold in the world, even though it's a, you know, a request by the

00:26:49 ◼   ► FBI in the United States.

00:26:50 ◼   ► then, you know, you keep pushing it and it's not just Apple, it's everyone, right?

00:26:55 ◼   ► Sure, I mean, Google is on the line here too. You know, Google's challenge is that so many

00:27:02 ◼   ► of their, they're an American OS vendor and, you know, obviously services vendor, but with

00:27:08 ◼   ► Android, they make the operating system, but they also got hardware partners, so it's a

00:27:12 ◼   ► little more complex there and a lot of their hardware partners are not in the United States,

00:27:17 ◼   ► But still, you know, if this impacts Apple, then it's going to affect Google and it's

00:27:23 ◼   ► going to affect Microsoft and that's going to be a challenge.

00:27:28 ◼   ► And this is, I'd say everything we know about this now, this is a fight that is being picked

00:27:35 ◼   ► by the US government and it's being picked as a precedent and it's being picked in the

00:27:42 ◼   ► most extreme circumstances where this is about the phone of somebody who killed a bunch of

00:27:47 ◼   ► people and pledged their support for a terrorist organization and it killed a bunch of people

00:27:55 ◼   ► on US soil. So it's going to be a very heated conversation and it's taking on Apple, which

00:28:02 ◼   ► has been the most extreme in terms of the companies, the tech companies, in terms of

00:28:07 ◼   ► defending its customers from intrusions from the government. So this is a choice that the

00:28:13 ◼   ► FBI has really made. And that's a fact because Apple actually asked for this to happen behind

00:28:20 ◼   ► the scenes in an off-the-record, you know, sealed discussion. And the FBI said, "Nope,"

00:28:27 ◼   ► because the FBI wanted this to be public. This is their calculated choice to raise this

00:28:34 ◼   ► issue with this heated example and with the most extreme tech company in terms of fighting

00:28:41 ◼   ► them on this stuff. So here we are.

00:28:44 ◼   ► Yeah, one of the other things I find really interesting and this might just be because

00:28:49 ◼   ► I've been watching Making a Murderer so there's a lot of mistrust about law enforcement in

00:28:53 ◼   ► my brain. The idea of the past, the iCloud password being changed and what that means

00:28:58 ◼   ► for all of this. John Gruber wrote a great article on this that again we'll put in the

00:29:04 ◼   ► show notes but that is a whole big thing that apparently the county changed the password,

00:29:12 ◼   ► the San Bernardino County changed the iCloud password for the account that was attached

00:29:18 ◼   ► to the phone at the FBI's request which is so, it just adds this like layer of what is

00:29:26 ◼   ► happening here. And Gruber sums it up quite nicely, and I'm going to destroy it by trying

00:29:32 ◼   ► to summarize it. Did they do this because they were stupid and didn't realize that this

00:29:38 ◼   ► would then mean that the phone couldn't back up to iCloud where Apple could extract data?

00:29:42 ◼   ► Or did they do this so they could set this whole thing up? Nobody knows.

00:29:47 ◼   ► Nobody knows.

00:29:48 ◼   ► That's very interesting.

00:29:49 ◼   ► Nobody knows.

00:29:50 ◼   ► That was a—yeah, there was a colossal IT failure there, but—unless it wasn't a failure,

00:29:54 ◼   ► but I think, again, I would choose incompetence over malevolence every time.

00:30:00 ◼   ► It's probably technical incompetence, because there's a lot of technical issues here.

00:30:04 ◼   ► I expect the same.

00:30:05 ◼   ► It's interesting that Apple was saying, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:30:08 ◼   ► Don't do that.

00:30:09 ◼   ► Don't do that.

00:30:10 ◼   ► Don't do that."

00:30:11 ◼   ► And meanwhile, somewhere else was like, "Yeah, let's try that.

00:30:12 ◼   ► See what happens."

00:30:14 ◼   ► And so that's what they did.

00:30:15 ◼   ► reset the password and that was a mistake because otherwise it could have been on a

00:30:19 ◼   ► familiar Wi-Fi network. Also, one thing that you won't find the FBI talking about a whole

00:30:22 ◼   ► lot is that both of the shooters had their own personal phones and they destroyed those

00:30:27 ◼   ► phones after the attacks, I believe, and before they were found, they destroyed those phones.

00:30:35 ◼   ► That changes the narrative a lot if they're like, "Well, we got to get access to his work

00:30:38 ◼   ► phone that he used for work because there could be a lot of special stuff on that."

00:30:42 ◼   ► well, what are the chances that there's a lot of special stuff on that given that they

00:30:46 ◼   ► had other phones that belong to them and that they specifically destroyed after the attacks

00:30:53 ◼   ► so that you couldn't see what was on them. All right, you know, but again, that clouds

00:30:57 ◼   ► the narrative so that doesn't really come out. It's yeah, it's a fascinating thing.

00:31:02 ◼   ► I will say one thing that I've learned in all of this is brute forcing a passcode, which

00:31:09 ◼   ► is what the FBI wants Apple to do and which it can, you know, Apple could even do on devices

00:31:15 ◼   ► beyond the 5C because it turns out that the secure enclave firmware can also be altered

00:31:21 ◼   ► theoretically by Apple to allow this. And that's what the FBI wants is to attach this

00:31:26 ◼   ► iPhone to a computer and just send it passcodes until it unlocks, you know, and not auto wipe.

00:31:33 ◼   ► They want to modify that and be able to send it remotely so that instead of sitting there

00:31:36 ◼   ► you're going, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

00:31:39 ◼   ► oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

00:31:40 ◼   ► oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

00:31:41 ◼   ► oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

00:31:42 ◼   ► oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

00:31:42 ◼   ► and trying all of them until it gets it open. That was my sound effect of a computer.

00:31:45 ◼   ► It was very good.

00:31:46 ◼   ► Boop. It boops is what it does. So, you know, in brute force scenario like that,

00:31:53 ◼   ► four-digit passcode is going to fall really fast. So Apple has already switched. Another example of

00:32:00 ◼   ► Apple trying to kind of like outpace this, Apple already has switched to recommend that people use

00:32:04 ◼   ► six-digit passcodes, which really helps in terms of the amount of time a brute force method would

00:32:09 ◼   ► would take. And if you go to an alphanumeric passcode, which I have now, and since I got

00:32:16 ◼   ► touch ID, and I would recommend, that's much harder to be brute forced. So, you know, and

00:32:24 ◼   ► again, it's like, well, I can hear somebody saying, "Well, what are you saying before

00:32:28 ◼   ► we commit crimes?" I'm like, "No, you know, this is the thing is I have nothing to hide.

00:32:32 ◼   ► I'm not a law breaker" is the exact wrong thing to say because this starts with searching

00:32:41 ◼   ► a horrible crime like this, but there are lots of places that it can end up where things

00:32:46 ◼   ► that you do that you're fine with, things you believe could end up being something that

00:32:52 ◼   ► is sought.

00:32:55 ◼   ► And you know, we carry our lives in these little devices and it's very important.

00:33:01 ◼   ► I actually think it's not just important in terms of us as a society in the world, not

00:33:06 ◼   ► just in the United States, but I think it's also important in terms of technology, because

00:33:09 ◼   ► if it becomes very clear that the data we put on our phones is compromised and viewed

00:33:18 ◼   ► by everybody or viewable by everybody, one of the things it's going to do is it's going

00:33:22 ◼   ► to hinder the progress of technology, potentially, because people will start to say, "I can't

00:33:28 ◼   ► trust my phone.

00:33:29 ◼   ► I'm not going to use that method.

00:33:30 ◼   ► I'm going to use different methods." And that's kind of crazy, but that could happen.

00:33:34 ◼   ► So I don't know. There's a lot here and it's ongoing and I'm firmly in Apple's

00:33:41 ◼   ► camp on this one. I really am. I think that law enforcement always wants everything it

00:33:47 ◼   ► can possibly get and it is the job of everybody else in society to say there's a line you

00:33:54 ◼   ► cannot cross because, yes, they want to make us safe, but they also want to know everything

00:34:00 ◼   ► and have complete control and have the right to do anything they want. And down, you know,

00:34:05 ◼   ► police states and totalitarian states can be very safe and very low on crime, but they're

00:34:10 ◼   ► not a place anyone will want to live. And so you got to back off that and you got to

00:34:14 ◼   ► say, where do we draw the line where we give law enforcement power to enforce the law and

00:34:19 ◼   ► to investigate horrible crimes without opening the door to governments and criminals from

00:34:25 ◼   ► looking at all of the things that we do in our lives. And, you know, I think Apple has

00:34:30 ◼   ► to push back on this because at this point, the environment in the United States government,

00:34:34 ◼   ► it seems to be that there's nobody else who is going to say no because they don't understand

00:34:39 ◼   ► the technology and they don't understand the ramifications. And it is very hard to stand

00:34:43 ◼   ► up and say no when somebody says, "These are radical terrorists who killed innocent people

00:34:48 ◼   ► in California, why do you want to, as one senator said, Senator, US Senator said last

00:34:54 ◼   ► week, why do you want to protect the terrorists like Apple does? Somebody has to stand up

00:34:59 ◼   ► and say this isn't about protecting terrorists, this is about protecting the citizens of our

00:35:05 ◼   ► country and free people all over the world and giving them privacy and security.

00:35:11 ◼   ► Let's leave it there on that for today, and I'm sure we'll come back to this over the

00:35:15 ◼   ► next couple of weeks.

00:35:16 ◼   ► I'm sure there's more to come.

00:35:20 ◼   ► We actually both have kind of pet topics today.

00:35:24 ◼   ► Things that both of us really care about, and the other one is that maybe a little bit

00:35:28 ◼   ► lukewarm about.

00:35:29 ◼   ► I don't know, but we'll see.

00:35:30 ◼   ► Way to sell it, Myke.

00:35:32 ◼   ► Get ready for half the host to be less interested, people.

00:35:36 ◼   ► Woo!

00:35:37 ◼   ► What we're probably going to be doing now is splitting our audience, right?

00:35:40 ◼   ► So we're going to be tickling the fancy of 50% at a time.

00:35:45 ◼   ► I promise to be enthusiastic about what you're talking about. No, I'm sorry. I can't make

00:35:48 ◼   ► that promise.

00:35:49 ◼   ► So, I'm always interested in this every single year. It's Mobile World Congress. So this

00:35:54 ◼   ► is where tons of mobile phone stuff happens. And usually it's a bunch of Android phones

00:36:01 ◼   ► because Apple's never there.

00:36:02 ◼   ► Correct.

00:36:03 ◼   ► And they also have a lot of, you know, now we're getting a lot of additional products

00:36:08 ◼   ► as well because mobile phone manufacturers manufacture tablets and cameras and wearables

00:36:14 ◼   ► and all that kind of stuff. But there were two phone announcements that happened yesterday

00:36:19 ◼   ► that I wanted to touch on because I think it's showing a few interesting developments

00:36:26 ◼   ► and maybe some stuff that I would like to see come to my phone of choice. So Samsung

00:36:31 ◼   ► announced the Galaxy S7 and the S7 Edge. And I'll put some links in the show notes to some

00:36:38 ◼   ► videos and kind of first hands-on type stuff from those and I wanted to run

00:36:43 ◼   ► through a few of the features in the S7 line that I think are very

00:36:49 ◼   ► interesting. Now this first one bear with me, an SD card slot. Now Samsung removed

00:36:57 ◼   ► this in the S6 because they removed the ability to have a the back used to come

00:37:02 ◼   ► off right and some of the Galaxy phones but in the S6 it was all sealed in so

00:37:07 ◼   ► SD card slot wasn't available anymore but now they've put it back in it looks like a sim card tray

00:37:11 ◼   ► now the reason that i think an SD card slot is interesting is it removes the 16 gigabyte problem

00:37:19 ◼   ► because the phones are expandable now i don't think apple would ever add an SD card slot to

00:37:27 ◼   ► the iphone correct but i think it is an interesting thing to think about as a way to remove something

00:37:34 ◼   ► that we all consider to be an issue, which is the 16 gigabyte iPhone, the fixed storage.

00:37:39 ◼   ► I don't think Apple thinks it's an issue. Oh, no, I was very specific in saying that we think

00:37:45 ◼   ► it's an issue. Yeah, well, I mean, it allows you to do a phone with a lower spec in terms of storage

00:37:51 ◼   ► and say, "Look, if you want more storage, just throw in a card." It does that. And it allows

00:37:56 ◼   ► you to let it grow over time, right? You can keep expanding it. And this actually brings me on to,

00:38:01 ◼   ► This wasn't a phone that was announced at Mobile World Congress, but it is a really interesting

00:38:06 ◼   ► take on phone storage and it's a phone called the NextBit Robin. What this does, this phone is an

00:38:12 ◼   ► Android phone, it comes with a 100 gigabyte cloud account. I think every single phone is 32 gigabytes

00:38:18 ◼   ► they don't offer anything else. What it does is the the OS is built so that it will automatically

00:38:25 ◼   ► offload data to the cloud. But not just your photos and that kind of stuff but also applications

00:38:34 ◼   ► and the data stored inside of applications. So they are removed from your phone

00:38:39 ◼   ► from a storage perspective and saved in the cloud and what they do is those applications

00:38:45 ◼   ► their icons go gray and you can download them on demand. And I think this is really interesting.

00:38:51 ◼   ► Like if I look at some of the apps on my phone, I may use them very rarely and having that

00:38:59 ◼   ► storage back might be good for somebody who has a smaller phone with the ability to just

00:39:04 ◼   ► grab the application within like 30 seconds as a wait for it to download.

00:39:10 ◼   ► And the idea of everything happening automatically, you know like it's just all the phone handles

00:39:15 ◼   ► it for you, feels like a very Apple way to solve this problem.

00:39:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, it introduces a bunch of other issues though,

00:39:24 ◼   ► right, it introduces the issues of what if that's an app

00:39:27 ◼   ► that you only ever use when you're out in the woods,

00:39:32 ◼   ► it's your hiking app, right?

00:39:33 ◼   ► Then you have to either set it as being don't delete or--

00:39:36 ◼   ► - Which you can do.

00:39:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, but again, then you're doing app management

00:39:41 ◼   ► in terms of manually saying, what do I want to sync

00:39:43 ◼   ► and what do I not?

00:39:44 ◼   ► - Sure.

00:39:45 ◼   ► or, you know, depending on your, uh, you're somewhere and you've got a limited data plan

00:39:51 ◼   ► and now you're somewhere and you're on cellular and now you have to download. There are issues.

00:39:57 ◼   ► I mean, it's clever. It's clever. And I feel like at some point this is going to happen with all of

00:40:03 ◼   ► our devices is you're not going to think about storage anymore because transfer speeds will be

00:40:10 ◼   ► be so huge and our data allotments will be so great and the intelligence of these devices

00:40:16 ◼   ► will be so great that you won't really even know what's on your device and what's in the

00:40:22 ◼   ► cloud. That's where we're going eventually, yeah.

00:40:25 ◼   ► I think so. And so going back to the… so that was one thing. But going back to the

00:40:29 ◼   ► S7 again, a couple of other features that it has. It's waterproof up to 1.5 meters

00:40:34 ◼   ► for 30 minutes, which I think is something that we can all agree is something we'd

00:40:38 ◼   ► in the iPhone, right? Just let it be waterproof. Yeah, exactly. It has wireless charging by

00:40:44 ◼   ► induction, like the Apple Watch, you can put it on a pad. And it also has fast charging.

00:40:49 ◼   ► I would like both of these features on the iPhone. The fast charging stuff is really

00:40:53 ◼   ► cool. I don't know the statistics because all the Android phones differ, but it would

00:40:58 ◼   ► get you to a much higher percentage in a quicker period of time, right? Like that. It's I know

00:41:04 ◼   ► this happens a lot with phones that they charge quicker up to a certain point and then it's

00:41:09 ◼   ► like the last 20% takes the majority of the time but these phones are built and Android

00:41:13 ◼   ► is built with the capability to get to that point much faster which is very interesting.

00:41:18 ◼   ► But the key feature that I really like here is an always on display. So the black area

00:41:25 ◼   ► of the display, right when it's off you know your phone's just black, you can have the

00:41:29 ◼   ► S7 display information to you like the time and date, you can have a calendar on there

00:41:34 ◼   ► or you can even have notifications pop up and they'll just pop up on the display,

00:41:38 ◼   ► the display doesn't turn on, it just appears in those areas and I think it's because they

00:41:42 ◼   ► use a Super AMOLED display.

00:41:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:41:45 ◼   ► Now those features, especially those last three, I mean the SD card slot, I don't care

00:41:49 ◼   ► for it but it is an option to solve a problem, but those last three features, I want all

00:41:54 ◼   ► of those things in my iPhone today.

00:41:58 ◼   ► I'm a wireless charging skeptic. I'm not sure. It's all in the details there, but...

00:42:04 ◼   ► I'll tell you why I would like it, and it's the Apple Watch that's made me want it.

00:42:08 ◼   ► I put my phone in the same place every night.

00:42:11 ◼   ► I would like to just put it down, as opposed to find the cable and plug it in.

00:42:16 ◼   ► And I know that it's such like a "what is wrong with you" kind of thing,

00:42:20 ◼   ► but I really like that I... 'cause my Apple Watch charger is fixed to my bedside table.

00:42:26 ◼   ► and just taking it off and putting it down and picking it up again, I like that.

00:42:30 ◼   ► Because as well a lot of the time I'm putting my phone on charge when the room is dark and

00:42:36 ◼   ► I have a few cables, I have like an iPhone cable and a MacBook cable plugged into the

00:42:41 ◼   ► same part next to my bed and I will guarantee you no matter whatever I do I always end up

00:42:47 ◼   ► with the MacBook cable in my hand.

00:42:49 ◼   ► So then I have to find the iPhone cable.

00:42:51 ◼   ► So I put the MacBook cable down and I pick up the MacBook cable again, right?

00:42:55 ◼   ► happens every night, and then I have to try and find where to plug it in, and I plug it

00:42:59 ◼   ► in, and I put it down. I would much prefer to just rest my phone on the little charging

00:43:04 ◼   ► cradle or whatever, and it just charges. That's nice.

00:43:07 ◼   ► A couple things. One is that the Apple Watch can only charge that way. And, you know, these

00:43:10 ◼   ► phones that can charge by induction will also be able to charge via a wire. Because one

00:43:14 ◼   ► of the challenges with the Apple Watch is you have to bring that thing with you, the

00:43:17 ◼   ► little puck, everywhere you go, because it's the only way to charge that thing. You can't

00:43:22 ◼   ► double up with a lightning cable or something like that. And again, I think it's in the

00:43:26 ◼   ► details. If every device that you own more or less ends up being something that you can

00:43:31 ◼   ► have, you know, you can have a pad in a couple places in your house where you can lay things

00:43:35 ◼   ► down and they charge, then that's great. I just, that's not a feature that super excites

00:43:42 ◼   ► me, induction charging. It's fine. I see why it appeals to you. I think waterproofing is

00:43:47 ◼   ► is more exciting because I was just in Orange County over the weekend and my mother-in-law

00:43:53 ◼   ► went and got a new iPhone because her iPhone fell on the toilet.

00:43:57 ◼   ► Oh, man.

00:43:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:59 ◼   ► What do you think about the always-on display stuff?

00:44:02 ◼   ► I like that. I think that's a great feature. You've got to have an OLED screen to do that

00:44:07 ◼   ► because of the way... Like on the Apple Watch because you need to use power. The way it

00:44:12 ◼   ► works is it only... When you light up a Pixel is the only time it uses power. And that's

00:44:16 ◼   ► It's different from the LCD screens that have to shine the bright lights behind in order

00:44:22 ◼   ► for you to see anything. So I think it's very clever, and I would love to see Apple do something

00:44:27 ◼   ► like that. You know, on the Apple Watch too.

00:44:30 ◼   ► Yeah, most definitely.

00:44:31 ◼   ► The Apple Watch should have it always on display too. But they would have to kill animations

00:44:37 ◼   ► and reduce... There's a lot of work they would have to do, and it's unclear whether they

00:44:40 ◼   ► could do that and have all day battery life because if they could, they perhaps would

00:44:44 ◼   ► have and they didn't, so they probably can't. But I would love to see that on an iPhone.

00:44:48 ◼   ► I would love to be able to get the time and some basic notifications on a glance on the

00:44:54 ◼   ► iPhone without -- at any moment. But --

00:44:58 ◼   ► >> There are Android Wear devices that do this, and they have all day battery life and

00:45:02 ◼   ► they show the time and they show basic information always. So it is technically possible to do.

00:45:08 ◼   ► So I would love to see Apple do that too please.

00:45:12 ◼   ► I think if we don't get, we've either watch OS 3 or we've watched 2, basically if we get

00:45:17 ◼   ► to the end of this year and the Apple Watch isn't always on, I think that's ridiculous

00:45:24 ◼   ► to me.

00:45:25 ◼   ► I think that is something that has to happen because it is frustrating as an Apple Watch

00:45:30 ◼   ► user to, like I'm looking at my watch right now, it's down over there where it's holding

00:45:35 ◼   ► pen for my pen tablet and I can't see the time. And the gesture doesn't work every time.

00:45:42 ◼   ► If the gesture worked 100% of the time with me lifting my wrist then it would be mainly

00:45:46 ◼   ► okay but it doesn't right because technology doesn't work like that.

00:45:51 ◼   ► Another phone which is interesting in different ways is the LG G5. So a couple of things the

00:45:57 ◼   ► LG G5 has, one of them is a dual camera system and this gives the phone a wider field of

00:46:02 ◼   ► view and I think helps with focusing. The reason I bring that up is because there was

00:46:05 ◼   ► a rumor earlier this year that the 6 Plus will have two cameras for this stuff, which

00:46:12 ◼   ► will allow the phone to be able to push photography in a further way. But what interests me about

00:46:17 ◼   ► the LG G5 is this modular nature of it. So you can pop out the bottom of the phone, like

00:46:24 ◼   ► the chin comes off, and it brings the battery out with it. And currently they have two other,

00:46:30 ◼   ► calling them friends which is one of the worst names I've ever heard in technology I don't

00:46:35 ◼   ► know why you call them friends call them modules or adapters anything else friends is such

00:46:40 ◼   ► a weird name but these they're basically additional functionality you can add to your phone with

00:46:45 ◼   ► hardware so one of them is a camera grip what this does is you plug this into the bottom

00:46:50 ◼   ► it gives you a bigger battery there is a grip that you can hold so it's more like how you

00:46:55 ◼   ► would hold an actual physical camera right so you can put your hand around it and grip

00:46:58 ◼   ► it with one hand. It has a zoom dial, a shutter button and a dedicated video button as well.

00:47:05 ◼   ► So if you are someone who really loves to take photos with your phone it gives you additional

00:47:09 ◼   ► functionality to do that in hardware which is interesting. They also have a tie-in with

00:47:13 ◼   ► Bang & Olufsen to have a DAC and AMP built into it which you can plug in. This does introduce

00:47:19 ◼   ► a second 3.5mm audio jack to the phone which is very peculiar but it allows you to play

00:47:26 ◼   ► high quality audio streams. So these are things that are interesting. Apple would never go

00:47:31 ◼   ► down this route, but I really like the idea of being able to put together your favorite

00:47:38 ◼   ► phone.

00:47:39 ◼   ► Well, that's the best thing about Android is that you can have this level of variation

00:47:43 ◼   ► because most almost all people do not want the, you know, some of these features. But,

00:47:51 ◼   ► know, it's a differentiator for LG and lets you customize and, you know, more like a computer

00:47:58 ◼   ► where you can kind of slide things in and out and have those modules that you want installed

00:48:03 ◼   ► and not the ones you don't. And I think that's very interesting. Yeah, this is not... The

00:48:08 ◼   ► thing that's interesting here, I think for me, is this idea of the dual camera system

00:48:12 ◼   ► because there have been rumors that Apple is working on something like that and that

00:48:15 ◼   ► makes a lot of sense. How do you up your photography game? Because that's one of the places where

00:48:19 ◼   ► Apple needs to continue to improve where the competition is strong and just even without

00:48:25 ◼   ► competition you want the iPhone camera to be better. And so the more clever things you

00:48:30 ◼   ► can do with software and multiple sensors to make that better and improving the sensors

00:48:35 ◼   ► is really important. I'm a little less, I'm one of those people who just rolls their eyes

00:48:39 ◼   ► when I hear about high quality audio because most audiophile stuff, sorry audiophiles,

00:48:44 ◼   ► most audio file stuff is not actually provably better than less audiophile-y stuff. And I

00:48:51 ◼   ► believe the B&O thing that goes in this phone is actually up sampling, which is why. But

00:48:58 ◼   ► anyway, there's a market for it because there are people who pay a lot of money for the

00:49:02 ◼   ► highest quality DAC and amp and that's, you know, bless 'em. And the camera thing is interesting

00:49:09 ◼   ► because we've seen these things you attach onto an iPhone, onto the edge of an iPhone

00:49:14 ◼   ► that make it into a camera and stuff. So it's an interesting idea to say, you pop in this

00:49:19 ◼   ► module and your phone is now a really good camera. That's a cool idea.

00:49:24 ◼   ► I've heard him talk about this in shows as well, but do you remember David Sparks had

00:49:27 ◼   ► that little camera, XOXO? Yeah, that's the one, yeah.

00:49:30 ◼   ► So you would take it, you didn't even have it plugged in, but you'd plug in this camera

00:49:34 ◼   ► at the end of your iPhone. So there is a market for this stuff. And the modular nature is

00:49:38 ◼   ► interesting to me. I've had my eye on and will continue to watch out for Project Aura

00:49:42 ◼   ► which is a company that Google bought and they're basically trying to build a smartphone

00:49:48 ◼   ► where you would basically compile it with all of the things that you want.

00:49:52 ◼   ► Yeah, that's never going to happen.

00:49:54 ◼   ► Well, you know, if it does it'll be amazing. If it doesn't then shame on that. There was

00:49:59 ◼   ► one thing I wanted to go back to the Galaxy S7 for a moment and I'm sorry I forgot to

00:50:04 ◼   ► mention this but I want to go back to this quickly. I want to talk about the design of

00:50:07 ◼   ► the phone because I think the the sound that the the argument of Samsung copying

00:50:15 ◼   ► Apple I think is a little played out at this point we know it happens you can

00:50:20 ◼   ► continue to show me the phone stacked on top of each other like I understand

00:50:24 ◼   ► right that the grill placement and the headphone jack placement it looks very

00:50:28 ◼   ► similar all right I get that but I wanted to draw attention to the edge so

00:50:33 ◼   ► So this is the phone, the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge.

00:50:36 ◼   ► The Edge is a slightly larger phone and it has a screen which wraps around the edges,

00:50:43 ◼   ► right?

00:50:44 ◼   ► So the screen actually wraps around the edge of a curved glass.

00:50:47 ◼   ► I think this is one of the best looking smartphones available today.

00:50:52 ◼   ► The curved screen adds a little bit of utility and functionality, but not a ton, but it adds

00:50:57 ◼   ► some extra bits and they're putting more into it.

00:51:00 ◼   ► Very little.

00:51:01 ◼   ► They've put more into it.

00:51:02 ◼   ► whatever. But that's not what I'm talking about here.

00:51:04 ◼   ► Like I just think that the design of this is very different to what we've seen

00:51:09 ◼   ► before. Nobody else makes a phone like this. Uh,

00:51:12 ◼   ► and I think it looks stunning and I wanted to point that out because I think in

00:51:17 ◼   ► our community or Samsung ever get is you copied, you copied, you copied.

00:51:21 ◼   ► But this is something that they did on their own that I think looks good and I

00:51:26 ◼   ► look forward to the email that I will receive. Um,

00:51:30 ◼   ► and being told as I'm usually told when I ever say things like this, that I should switch

00:51:35 ◼   ► to Android because I don't deserve Apple devices. So I welcome that feedback from Apple.

00:51:39 ◼   ► I was just going to say that the Edge display is very Samsung in that it's something that

00:51:43 ◼   ► they know how to do technically and have no idea what to do with it. And it's not useful

00:51:47 ◼   ► in any way. And they're desperately adding software features to try to explain how it

00:51:53 ◼   ► could be useful, but they're really not good at software and they're really not good at

00:51:55 ◼   ► user interface. So it's just kind of pointless. I agree it is a very impressive bit of technology

00:52:00 ◼   ► it's probably the other premium smartphone, really, compared to the iPhone, is the Galaxy

00:52:09 ◼   ► S6 and now 7 Edge, because that's like the high end of the Samsung phones. And I think

00:52:19 ◼   ► it's fair, I think it was fair for people to really knock Samsung for the S6, because

00:52:24 ◼   ► they were not just aping Apple, but they were turning their back on some of the key features

00:52:27 ◼   ► that people want in an Android phone to ape Apple, like the fact that it didn't have upgradeable

00:52:32 ◼   ► storage.

00:52:33 ◼   ► Yeah. And they've gone back and fixed some of that now, which is good.

00:52:36 ◼   ► And they addressed that with by putting it in the SIM tray, I think. But that was, I

00:52:42 ◼   ► think, a fair accusation for the S6, because I think the story was not just that they were

00:52:49 ◼   ► copying Apple, but they were actually kind of like breaking some of their important features

00:52:52 ◼   ► that their customers had relied on in order to copy Apple, which is like, no, don't do

00:52:58 ◼   ► that. That's bad. But, you know, I, yeah, so I think the Edge is an impressive device.

00:53:02 ◼   ► I just, I'm skeptical because all the, you know, Samsung, the story of Samsung to me

00:53:05 ◼   ► is that they have very impressive hardware and then they put their kind of software junk

00:53:10 ◼   ► on top of it and most of their software is junk and it makes Android worse. And they

00:53:15 ◼   ► try to justify features that they add that are kind of dumb, but they can add them because

00:53:19 ◼   ► they have the hardware prowess and then they just kind of can't live up to it with their

00:53:23 ◼   ► software. That's my knock on Samsung. And I'm surprised that they haven't gotten—I

00:53:27 ◼   ► mean, I guess they've gotten better at it, but it's still a problem with them.

00:53:29 ◼   ► Not really. It took them six months to put the most recent version of Android out.

00:53:35 ◼   ► I'm just saying, if I were to buy an Android phone today, I would not buy a Samsung. I

00:53:39 ◼   ► would buy one that's running stock Android. I would buy one of the Nexus. I did actually

00:53:43 ◼   ► buy a 5X, but I did it because it was cheap and I wanted a reference system so I can say,

00:53:47 ◼   ► "Oh, here's what this app looks like on Android."

00:53:49 ◼   ► And I didn't want to spend the money on a 6, yeah.

00:53:51 ◼   ► - I am gonna buy a Nexus 6P at some point

00:53:54 ◼   ► because I'm very interested in it

00:53:55 ◼   ► and I like to have an Android device around.

00:53:58 ◼   ► So that's on my shopping list.

00:54:00 ◼   ► - Sure.

00:54:01 ◼   ► I wanna throw out one thing,

00:54:03 ◼   ► which is the Sony Xperia Ear.

00:54:05 ◼   ► Just because I've talked about this before,

00:54:10 ◼   ► this idea that perhaps the future is not VR goggles

00:54:14 ◼   ► or glasses that you wear with cameras on them.

00:54:17 ◼   ► Perhaps the future is things like,

00:54:20 ◼   ► things that talk to you and that you talk to.

00:54:23 ◼   ► And I think it's interesting that people

00:54:25 ◼   ► are increasingly interested in and intrigued

00:54:28 ◼   ► by the Amazon Echo, not just Dan Morin.

00:54:32 ◼   ► And I think this is, because that's a speaker,

00:54:36 ◼   ► but it's also a voice interface that just sort of hangs out

00:54:39 ◼   ► and waits for you to talk to it.

00:54:41 ◼   ► And the Xperia ear is this thing that Sony is doing.

00:54:45 ◼   ► And I have, I'm not gonna make a judgment

00:54:48 ◼   ► about whether this is gonna be a good product or not.

00:54:50 ◼   ► I have my doubts, but it's interesting in that it is,

00:54:54 ◼   ► the idea there is you stick it in your ear

00:54:56 ◼   ► and then you can talk to it

00:54:57 ◼   ► and you can hear what it has to say.

00:54:58 ◼   ► And it's paired with your Sony Xperia phone.

00:55:02 ◼   ► And I think they even are gonna make like a thing

00:55:04 ◼   ► you can clip on your shirt that is a camera.

00:55:07 ◼   ► And the idea of like, and again,

00:55:09 ◼   ► I think this is not the right approach now, but I think that as technology improves, these

00:55:13 ◼   ► are going to be approaches that are interesting. The idea that instead of wearing Google Glass,

00:55:19 ◼   ► you're going to just stick a thing in your ear and then your intelligent agent will talk

00:55:23 ◼   ► to you and you will talk back and it knows where you are and it's talking to your phone.

00:55:28 ◼   ► I do think that that's sort of where it's going. So I thought it was interesting that

00:55:31 ◼   ► Sony actually had a product at Mobile World Congress that is a phone accessory that is

00:55:36 ◼   ► just a thing you stick in your ear. And you're saying, isn't that just sort of a smart Bluetooth

00:55:41 ◼   ► headset? Kind of, but you know, they're trying to make it more like it's an Amazon Echo that

00:55:50 ◼   ► is just stuck in your ear. It's interesting, but impractical it seems.

00:55:54 ◼   ► So I always find Mobile World Congress interesting. I think that there's some interesting stuff

00:55:59 ◼   ► happening in Android. I'm happy that it continues to happen because there's a lot of competition

00:56:02 ◼   ► there, and you can see how they compete with each other and they try and push things forward.

00:56:06 ◼   ► Not everything works, but at least there's stuff happening.

00:56:09 ◼   ► So...

00:56:10 ◼   ► Yeah, it would be not a very interesting world if everybody... it was just Apple and then

00:56:15 ◼   ► everybody else was just sleepy.

00:56:17 ◼   ► Apple needs to be motivated and competition is good.

00:56:23 ◼   ► This week's episode is also brought to you by FreshBooks.

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00:59:11 ◼   ► So what's your topic, Jason?

00:59:13 ◼   ► Oh, my topic is home automation.

00:59:16 ◼   ► Okay.

00:59:17 ◼   ► We've had this on the schedule for a while. I just wanted to touch on it. I thought it

00:59:21 ◼   ► would be fun to talk about something that's a little less tied to the news of the day.

00:59:25 ◼   ► I got an Amazon Echo as mentioned earlier. I got one over the weekend.

00:59:30 ◼   ► All of my friends are buying them. Federico just bought one.

00:59:33 ◼   ► Tiffany and Marco just bought one, yeah. Why did you do it?

00:59:36 ◼   ► I did it because I feel like enough people are trying it and using it and then integrating

00:59:44 ◼   ► it into their lives that it seems like there's something there. None of those people who

00:59:52 ◼   ► bought them have reported to me that they used it for a while and now they don't use

00:59:56 ◼   ► it anymore. Instead, they keep saying, "Oh, I use it for this thing now and now I use

01:00:00 ◼   ► it for this other thing." And I think that's interesting and it shows that Amazon keeps

01:00:03 ◼   ► trying to improve the product and tie it into more stuff. And so I was intrigued by that

01:00:11 ◼   ► and I thought, "Well, I need to actually try this." I was gonna buy one when it first came

01:00:15 ◼   ► out and Dan basically said he was gonna buy one. I said, "Well, then you go ahead and

01:00:18 ◼   ► you write about it." And it's become one of his favorite things. So I bought one. I'm

01:00:22 ◼   ► also trying to find replacements for my audio stuff in my house because the Logitech stuff

01:00:28 ◼   ► is kind of fading away, the SqueezeBox stuff, and doesn't support Apple Music and doesn't

01:00:34 ◼   ► do, you know, it doesn't have Bluetooth. And so it's kind of, it's more problematic, although

01:00:39 ◼   ► of the things I still like about it.

01:00:41 ◼   ► So I've been trying some Sonos gear out,

01:00:43 ◼   ► and then I decided I would try the Echo for that too,

01:00:45 ◼   ► because it's a speaker, internet connected,

01:00:48 ◼   ► and it's got Bluetooth, so I can attach my phone to it

01:00:50 ◼   ► if I wanna listen to a podcast or something like that.

01:00:53 ◼   ► So yeah, so I bought one,

01:00:54 ◼   ► and I set it up over the weekend.

01:00:57 ◼   ► - What are you liking about it?

01:00:58 ◼   ► What is it adding, or what are you replacing?

01:01:01 ◼   ► - Well, I've got it in the kitchen where I have had,

01:01:05 ◼   ► I tried out a Sonos speaker there,

01:01:07 ◼   ► I had the Logitech squeeze box there for quite a while. And I, you know, it's taking some

01:01:13 ◼   ► getting used to. It's tied into this Amazon ecosystem. I don't have access via voice control

01:01:19 ◼   ► to all of my music. If I want to listen to Apple music, for example, I have to stream

01:01:24 ◼   ► it from my phone because it's tied to Amazon's Prime Music Library. And Amazon's Prime Music

01:01:28 ◼   ► Library has a bunch of stuff. I haven't uploaded my entire music collection onto Amazon. So

01:01:33 ◼   ► I can't sort of arbitrarily tell it to play one of my playlists or all the songs from particular artists that I have in my library.

01:01:40 ◼   ► It doesn't...

01:01:43 ◼   ► I'm

01:01:44 ◼   ► less far along than I think some people will be with it because it doesn't integrate with a lot of the home

01:01:50 ◼   ► automation stuff that I do have. I think this is one of the problems is that it's so early for this stuff that a

01:01:55 ◼   ► lot of it hasn't

01:01:57 ◼   ► has really

01:02:00 ◼   ► connected with with everything else. They're still sort of competing in their own silos

01:02:03 ◼   ► in some extent. So I've got a couple of LIFX light bulbs and there's no native support

01:02:08 ◼   ► on the Echo for that. There's a task, I think they call it, where you can connect and it

01:02:14 ◼   ► doesn't work. I can't get it to control my light bulbs. I can get it to control WEMO

01:02:21 ◼   ► switch like Dan Morin does. I can't get it to talk to the Nest thermostat because Nest

01:02:27 ◼   ► doesn't have direct integration and the third party thing that connects has apparently run

01:02:33 ◼   ► into its API limit with Nest.

01:02:36 ◼   ► What third party thing is that?

01:02:40 ◼   ► There's a third party connection. See, this is one of those things where you can do third

01:02:43 ◼   ► party connections inside the Echo where it's, like I said, I think it's called a skill.

01:02:48 ◼   ► It's a skill. And basically a skill is like a plugin that goes out to the web and does

01:02:56 ◼   ► something and then brings the information back, but it's not something that's programmed

01:02:59 ◼   ► directly by Amazon.

01:03:00 ◼   ► Have you taken a look at Wink?

01:03:02 ◼   ► I have.

01:03:03 ◼   ► This is something that Dan Morin suggested and I'm using it for something.

01:03:07 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, so there are connections and I have more to explore, but it's just interesting

01:03:11 ◼   ► that a lot, I've run into a lot of roadblocks, but the nice thing about it is, it is good

01:03:19 ◼   ► at some things and it's a Bluetooth device.

01:03:22 ◼   ► And that's actually great because one of the challenges I had in my kitchen was that the

01:03:28 ◼   ► squeeze box doesn't have Bluetooth. And so if I wanted to play something from my phone,

01:03:34 ◼   ► I have to plug it into a cable. And it's nice to not have to do that. And so I've got access

01:03:40 ◼   ► to everything. It'll play everything that I've got on my phone as well as everything

01:03:45 ◼   ► that it has access to. And there is something nice about being across the room and saying,

01:03:49 ◼   ► know, play this kind of music and it does a, you know, an Amazon Prime playlist shuffle.

01:03:55 ◼   ► That's pretty cool. So I think this is a good idea for a product. I'm a little surprised,

01:04:00 ◼   ► one, I'm surprised that Sonos doesn't have voice stuff built into their stuff yet, and

01:04:05 ◼   ► I'm a little surprised that Apple hasn't built a little home hub with a speaker and with

01:04:11 ◼   ► Siri built in. I'm a little surprised that we haven't seen a home kit essentially hub

01:04:17 ◼   ► with Siri built in because the appeal, one of the appeals of the Echo is that it has

01:04:22 ◼   ► really good microphones. It can pick up sound a lot better than the, than your iPhone can.

01:04:29 ◼   ► So you can control it from all over the place. And it's, you know, and it, if your phone's

01:04:33 ◼   ► in your pocket, you can't control Siri right then because it's in your pocket. So you got

01:04:37 ◼   ► to take it out and all that. And then this is just, it's, it's ambient. It's just in

01:04:41 ◼   ► your house and you can send it commands. And I think, and then it'll play music and it'll

01:04:47 ◼   ► talk to you and things like that. I think that's pretty smart, I think that's clever.

01:04:49 ◼   ► I think having a device that's not just, you know, "Oh, go to your iPhone for that" or

01:04:54 ◼   ► "Go to your Apple Watch for that," but like, no, I've got this hub in my house that talks

01:04:57 ◼   ► to my other stuff and talks to me. I think that's a good idea, so I'm a little surprised

01:05:00 ◼   ► that we haven't seen more of these. I suspect the Echo seems to have gotten some momentum,

01:05:04 ◼   ► I suspect we will.

01:05:05 ◼   ► Yeah, it seems more and more possible that this type of thing could exist, because the

01:05:09 ◼   ► Echo exists and is seeming to, well, at least in our world, gain some traction. Who knows

01:05:16 ◼   ► how many people are actually really buying this thing?

01:05:18 ◼   ► Well, you know, they had a Super Bowl ad. They've been supply constrained. It's often

01:05:24 ◼   ► very hard to find, you know, it goes in and out of stock. One of the reasons that I bought

01:05:30 ◼   ► one, this may have happened for several of us, is that they were suddenly saying, "It'll

01:05:34 ◼   ► ship right away." It's like, "Wow, it'll ship right away. I won't have to wait for three

01:05:38 ◼   ► weeks to get the new shipment in. That's pretty great." But I think, sometimes I think that

01:05:44 ◼   ► too much is made of the idea that in our circles people are interested in something and that

01:05:49 ◼   ► doesn't mean that other people will be interested in it because the way I've always approached

01:05:53 ◼   ► it and I found this to be the case is tech savvy people are not, how should I put this,

01:06:02 ◼   ► tech savvy people are telling us what non-tech savvy people will want two years from now,

01:06:09 ◼   ► years from now, six years from now. I think that I have found that to be more often the

01:06:15 ◼   ► case, especially when it's not like, oh, well, I picked up this new gadget because it's a

01:06:19 ◼   ► new gadget and I pick up all the new gadgets, but it's like, no, I really like this one

01:06:23 ◼   ► and I've integrated this into my life in this interesting way. I feel like more often than

01:06:27 ◼   ► not when you observe the early adopters, you were getting a read on what the world will

01:06:35 ◼   ► do later. Right? And so that's what intrigues me about this, is that this is an interesting

01:06:43 ◼   ► product that might point the way to something that has, you know, it's the equivalent of

01:06:48 ◼   ► having that whole home computer that you talk to that's in a science fiction movie. This

01:06:52 ◼   ► is basically that. It's Amazon plopping a microphone and a speaker down in the middle

01:06:56 ◼   ► of your house and you can talk to it and it tells you what's going on. And that's cool.

01:07:03 ◼   ► And a phone-focused company like Apple didn't do that.

01:07:08 ◼   ► Yeah, well, because they think, I guess, that it should all be in the phone, right?

01:07:15 ◼   ► Or the Apple TV remote, I guess.

01:07:17 ◼   ► I mean, that's the interesting thing is if you're...

01:07:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I guess it's in the phone and the watch and the Apple TV remote.

01:07:23 ◼   ► I think what's intriguing about the Echo is that for some people in some circumstances,

01:07:27 ◼   ► It adds that level of ambient sensing, right, where you don't have to do anything, take

01:07:33 ◼   ► anything out, push any buttons. This is true if you've got your iPhone out somewhere laying

01:07:40 ◼   ► around, but if you've got it in your pocket, you can't really talk to it in there. And

01:07:45 ◼   ► its microphones are not gonna—they aren't as effective at picking this stuff up as the

01:07:49 ◼   ► Echo is. Anyway, I don't know, it may be ridiculous. It may be a ridiculous product and I may end

01:07:53 ◼   ► up not liking it, but I feel like it got to the point where I wanted to try it. So, you

01:07:57 ◼   ► know, and I've got my, my house is a, is a mess. I mean, I don't need to go into

01:08:00 ◼   ► more details about this, but you know, I've got, I've got the, I've got the, um,

01:08:05 ◼   ► the nest, uh, thermostat I wrote about smart thermostats for wire cutter and

01:08:09 ◼   ► sweet home. I wrote about IP cameras, like the, like the nest cam and the

01:08:13 ◼   ► Canary. And there are a bunch of others or for wire cutter. Um, I got that team

01:08:19 ◼   ► making machine that, that is not that there's something to be said for devices

01:08:24 ◼   ► that are not smart but are smart.

01:08:27 ◼   ► You know, it's a dumb device.

01:08:29 ◼   ► It isn't connected to the internet,

01:08:30 ◼   ► it isn't connected to Bluetooth or anything, but it's--

01:08:32 ◼   ► - Does some clever things.

01:08:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, it moves, you know, it makes tea.

01:08:37 ◼   ► On a timing schedule, it'll drop the,

01:08:39 ◼   ► boil the water, drop the basket,

01:08:40 ◼   ► pull the basket back out again,

01:08:41 ◼   ► and beep at a particular time.

01:08:44 ◼   ► You know, it's interesting.

01:08:46 ◼   ► Although immediately Dan Morin's thought was,

01:08:49 ◼   ► when he got one, was it would be great

01:08:51 ◼   ► if I could tell it to go with an app on my phone.

01:08:54 ◼   ► I'm like, all right, fine, yeah, I suppose.

01:08:57 ◼   ► But I don't know, the--

01:09:00 ◼   ► - There are some things you could do, right?

01:09:01 ◼   ► Like I'm sure you could,

01:09:02 ◼   ► could you plug it into a Wiimote switch?

01:09:04 ◼   ► - No. - No?

01:09:05 ◼   ► - No, this is, and same with the dehumidifier

01:09:07 ◼   ► that I have in my house, that it,

01:09:09 ◼   ► powering it on and off at the plug

01:09:12 ◼   ► does not turn it on and off.

01:09:14 ◼   ► - Tell you what we need,

01:09:15 ◼   ► somebody to create a little robot thing.

01:09:18 ◼   ► - Button pusher?

01:09:18 ◼   ► - That, yeah, it's just a button pusher.

01:09:20 ◼   ► - Little actuator, little button pushing robot,

01:09:22 ◼   ► that probably already exists.

01:09:23 ◼   ► beep. Yep. What's the sound effects today? Tied it to a Raspberry Pi and you know it

01:09:29 ◼   ► crawls along your, it crawls along your kitchen counter. John Siracusa would say that's still

01:09:35 ◼   ► not a robot and pushes the buttons that you need to. So I have to say that the connected

01:09:40 ◼   ► home stuff is becoming more and more prevalent in my life. I feel like I'm talking about

01:09:44 ◼   ► it more often and that kind of thing. Like for example we've been talking about it quite

01:09:48 ◼   ► a bit on connected. Steven and Federico have been going down this route a lot more than

01:09:52 ◼   ► I have. Federico also just bought an Echo and we spoke about that on last week's episode.

01:10:00 ◼   ► The only thing that I have is a Canary which I bought recently as a home security device

01:10:08 ◼   ► and having something like that is opening my eyes up to more but I'm not really going

01:10:13 ◼   ► to be digging in too much right now because I'm waiting until we actually buy our own

01:10:17 ◼   ► place before I start putting stuff like this in. Like I want a nest and all that kind of

01:10:23 ◼   ► stuff, like I want to have all of that, but it's kind of pointless putting it into the

01:10:27 ◼   ► house that I don't plan to be in for hopefully too much longer.

01:10:30 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's, uh, well then you'll move into some place that's got old wiring

01:10:36 ◼   ► and you'll be foiled again to take it from me. And that's, I think, I think one of my

01:10:42 ◼   ► questions about smart home stuff in general is how can we get to the dream? Because the

01:10:47 ◼   ► challenge is you want a house that feels like a normal house, at least for some values of

01:10:53 ◼   ► normal, but is actually smart. You know, what I found is you can get a lot of things to

01:10:59 ◼   ► be smart if you take all your light switches and turn them all on and then put in bulbs

01:11:06 ◼   ► and things like that. But that's weird because then the light switches are all on and you

01:11:12 ◼   ► turn them off or the whole thing breaks because then there's no power going to these smart

01:11:15 ◼   ► devices, right? So what you need to do is rethink how power gets to devices and then

01:11:20 ◼   ► those switches on the wall are actually just talking to the smart devices, but they don't

01:11:25 ◼   ► actually they aren't actually connected to the if you want switches on the wall at all.

01:11:30 ◼   ► I mean it all starts to unravel so so you can't do that. So instead you kind of go from

01:11:36 ◼   ► the other direction which is you start adding little things here and there and you know

01:11:39 ◼   ► how long do you want to rip your house apart to rewire it to get it to support some stuff?

01:11:46 ◼   ► We upgrade our phones every year or two, we don't upgrade our houses every year or two,

01:11:49 ◼   ► like to a brand new house and throw away the old house or recycle the old house. And there's

01:11:54 ◼   ► new tech because this is all moving so fast, so you keep on throwing out the old light

01:11:59 ◼   ► bulb that is perfectly fine as a light bulb but doesn't support the latest firmware that

01:12:04 ◼   ► does something neat. I don't know. It's a fascinating area because like the smart watches,

01:12:13 ◼   ► this feels like an area that everybody's trying lots of stuff and nobody really has it right

01:12:17 ◼   ► and it feels like it's early days and it's going to be a while before it all settles

01:12:23 ◼   ► out. I would be hard-pressed to recommend any smart home product to a not tech-savvy

01:12:32 ◼   ► person right now and say no no you should totally get a whatever because you'll love

01:12:37 ◼   ► it. I feel like these aren't objects of love yet they are more like curiosity.

01:12:43 ◼   ► Yeah that's a good way of putting it and we're really early in this and considering

01:12:50 ◼   ► what this stuff is setting out to do I think it's best that it just stays within people

01:12:56 ◼   ► that are really interested in technology. Because this stuff is going to change a lot

01:13:01 ◼   ► and there's gonna be problems with it.

01:13:03 ◼   ► And at least for a while,

01:13:07 ◼   ► everybody's gonna be upgrading their stuff

01:13:08 ◼   ► every couple of years.

01:13:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, and the standards are gonna fight,

01:13:15 ◼   ► and some are gonna win, and some are gonna lose,

01:13:16 ◼   ► and in the end, there'll probably be a kind of acceptance

01:13:19 ◼   ► that everything's gonna interoperate,

01:13:21 ◼   ► and that'll be good.

01:13:24 ◼   ► Actually, you know who I really pity

01:13:26 ◼   ► is the people who are buying new homes right now,

01:13:29 ◼   ► like newly built homes that are being built by somebody

01:13:33 ◼   ► who thinks they know what smart home features are gonna be,

01:13:36 ◼   ► because I think that's gonna be the worst scenario

01:13:38 ◼   ► 'cause you're gonna, you know, potentially,

01:13:40 ◼   ► I don't know if this is actually happening,

01:13:41 ◼   ► but I assume it is somewhere.

01:13:42 ◼   ► When I go visit my mother,

01:13:43 ◼   ► they're building like 8,000 houses around her in Arizona.

01:13:48 ◼   ► I assume that somebody is like, "Oh, no, no, no,

01:13:49 ◼   ► we're gonna wire you for smart home

01:13:50 ◼   ► and it's got all this stuff."

01:13:51 ◼   ► And then that is, your house is gonna be out of date

01:13:53 ◼   ► in a few years.

01:13:55 ◼   ► That's gonna be bad.

01:13:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, you need to take your house and get out there.

01:14:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, I need a house upgrade.

01:14:03 ◼   ► Well, that'll cost many thousands of dollars.

01:14:05 ◼   ► - What kinds of things are you looking for from this?

01:14:08 ◼   ► Like what are the things that you want to be able to do

01:14:11 ◼   ► that you can't do?

01:14:12 ◼   ► - I don't know, I mean, some of it,

01:14:13 ◼   ► like the lighting is a good example where it's like,

01:14:15 ◼   ► I like the idea of having lighting

01:14:17 ◼   ► that changes based on conditions,

01:14:18 ◼   ► but whether it's based on the weather

01:14:20 ◼   ► or light in the house,

01:14:22 ◼   ► how much light is getting into your house or time of day.

01:14:25 ◼   ► And I have set that up for the two bulbs

01:14:27 ◼   ► that are outside with the light switch

01:14:29 ◼   ► that's permanently on now.

01:14:30 ◼   ► And that's all based on time and stuff like that.

01:14:33 ◼   ► I like that idea, but again,

01:14:34 ◼   ► I've got banks of light switches in my house

01:14:37 ◼   ► and the wiring is what it is.

01:14:39 ◼   ► And that's a good example of like,

01:14:40 ◼   ► well, if all the lights were smartly controlled

01:14:44 ◼   ► and could be programmed and all of that,

01:14:46 ◼   ► that would be kind of neat.

01:14:47 ◼   ► But there's so much overhead there

01:14:50 ◼   ► that it's just never gonna happen.

01:14:53 ◼   ► And, you know, yeah, tying it in with my weather station

01:14:55 ◼   ► my thermostat and having them all talk to each other and be able to make interesting

01:15:01 ◼   ► decisions about what we want to do at a certain time of day or night. And you know, the TV

01:15:06 ◼   ► comes on and we're watching a show and it knows that when I'm watching TV in the living

01:15:10 ◼   ► room after eight o'clock, I want this bank of lights off. I want that bank of lights

01:15:15 ◼   ► off. I want this bank of lights at 40%, you know, and I just, I just do that all now and

01:15:21 ◼   ► it's fine. I flip all the switches and I'll sit down to watch a show and I'll realize

01:15:25 ◼   ► that certain lights are on that I'm seeing the reflection in the TV set and I need to

01:15:29 ◼   ► turn them off. Eventually, that stuff should all be sort of like, "Oh, I see what you're

01:15:34 ◼   ► doing and I know how you want the house." Or at the very least, you could say, "Hey,

01:15:38 ◼   ► could you put me in TV in movie theater mode?" or whatever it is. But it's just there's so

01:15:44 ◼   ► much complexity there and I'm not willing, nor do I think it would be wise for me to

01:15:49 ◼   ► invest in something because it's too early, right? I don't see some shining system out

01:15:55 ◼   ► there that I'm like, "Yes, if I buy that controller and rewire my entire house and put in all

01:16:00 ◼   ► these light bulbs in all these places and have all these other sensors, suddenly it'll

01:16:04 ◼   ► --" you know, that tech is not -- it's not good enough yet. It's not all here yet. But

01:16:09 ◼   ► I think that's the -- I think that's the dream is like for all of the stuff that's in your

01:16:13 ◼   ► house, maybe even down to the the team maker and and stuff to be able to talk to each other.

01:16:19 ◼   ► Maybe not the team maker. I just want the team maker to, you know, the team maker needs

01:16:23 ◼   ► to talk to the robot butler. That's the important part.

01:16:26 ◼   ► It really I feel like a lot of this is about the team maker.

01:16:29 ◼   ► And the robot butler. Sure. You got to get a robot butler. That's that's the missing

01:16:33 ◼   ► piece in every smart home of the future is a robot butler to bring you things. Thanks,

01:16:38 ◼   ► Jeeves. Mm hmm. Should we just mask upgrade? I think it's time. Hashtag #A

01:16:38 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. Should we do some mask upgrade? I think it's time. #AskUpgrade, brought to you by

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01:19:30 ◼   ► hashtag ask upgrade

01:19:32 ◼   ► Sit the whole time just waiting waiting for the world wondering what I'm gonna do waiting for the word. Mm-hmm

01:19:39 ◼   ► First from our essential enemy it would have yes

01:19:42 ◼   ► Do you feel as though the impactful size of the iPad pro has normalized after months of usage?

01:19:49 ◼   ► I found that it normalized for me very quickly, like within days.

01:19:55 ◼   ► Yeah, it-- so my wife's got an iPad Air, and I picked it up the other day and I'm like,

01:20:03 ◼   ► "Aw, it's so cute! It's so tiny!" You do lose perspective after a while with the iPad Pro.

01:20:12 ◼   ► When I pick it up, I still recognize that it's a really big iPad. I mean, that hasn't

01:20:17 ◼   ► gone away, but it's changed and it is normalized to a certain degree, I would say. I wouldn't

01:20:23 ◼   ► say 100% essential enemy, but I would say, yeah. There was a moment, in fact, when I

01:20:29 ◼   ► was in Arizona, visiting my mom, where I was working on my MacBook Air. It's an 11-inch

01:20:37 ◼   ► MacBook Air. I pulled out the old iPad Pro and I realized, "Oh my God, this is so much

01:20:44 ◼   ► larger than the display on the laptop, like so much larger and that was it was a funny

01:20:50 ◼   ► moment but yeah I when I pick it up I can still feel it and I'm like boy this is a big

01:20:55 ◼   ► iPad but it's definitely seems normal now.

01:21:00 ◼   ► Yeah without a shadow of a doubt like it's my iPad.

01:21:05 ◼   ► Yeah I agree it's amazing how that works in fact I picked up my son's iPad Mini the other

01:21:10 ◼   ► day and I was like wow this is like yeah this might as well be an iPhone at this point.

01:21:14 ◼   ► Yeah, Adena uses an iPad mini and I think it's hilarious. I think what's amazing about it is

01:21:19 ◼   ► it's got all the pixels of the iPad Air and and if you've got the mini 4 it's got most of if not all

01:21:25 ◼   ► not quite all but most of the power of the iPad Air 2. So the iPad mini is a an impressive

01:21:32 ◼   ► bit of hardware but it's just compared to the iPad Pro it's just kind of staggering how

01:21:38 ◼   ► You know, they're the little tiny dogs that can fit in a teacup, and then they're the, they're like Great Danes.

01:21:45 ◼   ► And they're all dogs, but boy are they different sizes.

01:21:49 ◼   ► That was a very weird analogy to make.

01:21:52 ◼   ► Right? I mean, iPads come in all sizes.

01:21:55 ◼   ► It is definitely correct, but lots of things come in different sizes.

01:21:59 ◼   ► Yeah, I suppose. I was thinking about it. We were dog sitting this week for a couple of days.

01:22:03 ◼   ► And I feel like my dog is a normal size of dog,

01:22:07 ◼   ► but this was an enormous golden retriever.

01:22:10 ◼   ► And my dog looked like the little mini sidekick dog

01:22:14 ◼   ► compared to this dog.

01:22:15 ◼   ► And my dog is not tiny, but not compared to this dog.

01:22:20 ◼   ► So I was thinking about dog sizes.

01:22:22 ◼   ► - More questions on the iPad Pro.

01:22:27 ◼   ► JR wrote in, "My biggest iPad Pro gripe

01:22:30 ◼   ► it does not allow you to split the on-screen keyboard. This is very weird. I thought that

01:22:37 ◼   ► this was crazy when I first tried the iPad Pro that you couldn't do a split screen keyboard

01:22:42 ◼   ► because it feels like the only iPad that really needs it. Right, because it's so wide and if you

01:22:47 ◼   ► want to hold it with two hands and thumb type you would want it to be split because there's no way

01:22:52 ◼   ► you can stretch your thumbs across the width of the screen and it's got so much screen that you

01:22:56 ◼   ► you could leave that keyboard up and you've still got huge amounts of screen space that

01:23:01 ◼   ► are not covered by it, but yet they took it out. Or they didn't build it for the iPad

01:23:05 ◼   ► Pro keyboard is probably a more accurate statement because that's a new keyboard that they built

01:23:10 ◼   ► and they didn't build in the split. I think it's weird, right? I mean, there are a lot

01:23:15 ◼   ► of Apple made some choices with the iPad Pro because they had to rebuild some things that

01:23:19 ◼   ► they couldn't just bring over from the original, you know, set of iPad, you know, screen sizes.

01:23:25 ◼   ► And this is one of them, the height of the number keys, I keep mistyping on the number

01:23:31 ◼   ► keys because they're short.

01:23:34 ◼   ► That bothers me.

01:23:36 ◼   ► The question about how the pencil gets used is a question.

01:23:39 ◼   ► There's a lot of little quirks.

01:23:40 ◼   ► I mean, it's definitely part of having the first iteration of a product is that there's

01:23:45 ◼   ► stuff like this that you wonder, "Why is it like this?"

01:23:49 ◼   ► Nobody knows.

01:23:50 ◼   ► Yeah, somebody knows.

01:23:52 ◼   ► They're not talking.

01:23:53 ◼   ► Jeff wanted to know, this is hunking back to a little bit of discussion from earlier,

01:23:57 ◼   ► do you think Apple will either end the 16GB base model iPhone or their ultra-stingy, Jeff's

01:24:04 ◼   ► words, 5GB of free iCloud storage? Do you think that either of these things are going

01:24:08 ◼   ► to go away? I mean, on an infinite time scale, everything changes.

01:24:17 ◼   ► It's gotta happen.

01:24:18 ◼   ► I had to search for that bell, I didn't know where it was, I turned around and I had to

01:24:23 ◼   ► scoot across the room, but I found it.

01:24:27 ◼   ► If I had to predict, I would once again predict I think the 16 is going to go away this year

01:24:32 ◼   ► on the iPhone 7.

01:24:35 ◼   ► And the iCloud, I don't know, they changed the pricing, they had the opportunity right

01:24:39 ◼   ► there and they didn't do it.

01:24:40 ◼   ► I feel like they need to.

01:24:41 ◼   ► I think that's actually a huge, and I've ranted about this before here, I think that's a huge

01:24:46 ◼   ► user experience problem that they've got is so many people have an iPhone and an iPad

01:24:51 ◼   ► and they can't use their iCloud storage and, you know, give away basic backups, you know,

01:24:58 ◼   ► just give it away, give away basic backups and then try to get them hooked on more services

01:25:02 ◼   ► above that. But I feel like you should have, when you buy a new Apple device, the basic

01:25:07 ◼   ► backup of data on those devices should just be covered. And then if you want to go up,

01:25:12 ◼   ► I'd also, if they wanted to keep the five gigabyte, I would say, can we make it additive

01:25:16 ◼   ► so that all of your active devices on a particular Apple ID get 5 gigabytes toward your iCloud

01:25:21 ◼   ► allotment, that might be another way of doing it because I hear that from people all the

01:25:27 ◼   ► time. They're like, "It's telling me I can't back up," and the last thing you want is for

01:25:30 ◼   ► your iPhone not to be backed up. And I appreciate that Apple wants to do services and make more

01:25:35 ◼   ► services revenue, but I think there should be a base of the free iCloud storage and it

01:25:41 ◼   ► should be based on what is a reasonable amount for somebody to back up per device. So, but

01:25:47 ◼   ► that one I'm less sure that Apple thinks of that as an issue, which is surprising because

01:25:53 ◼   ► I actually think it's a big issue.

01:25:57 ◼   ► And finally today from Chris, "If you could spend the day with any celebrity, who would

01:26:00 ◼   ► it be?" I think about this and I know that I will probably have a better answer if I

01:26:05 ◼   ► thought about it every day for the next two weeks, but I think one of the obvious ones

01:26:09 ◼   ► for me is Stephen Fry because he seems like such a lovely and very interesting person.

01:26:15 ◼   ► I've been a big fan of Stephen Fry for many years and I would very much like to spend the day with

01:26:20 ◼   ► him and just talk to him because he would I'm sure he'd always have stuff to talk about as well which

01:26:25 ◼   ► you know and having had a very brief conversation with Stephen Fry once he is very personable and

01:26:33 ◼   ► and seems like a very, very nice guy.

01:26:35 ◼   ► - I don't think I have a good answer here.

01:26:40 ◼   ► I've been thinking about it

01:26:41 ◼   ► and I'm not sure I've got a good answer.

01:26:43 ◼   ► I'm not sure I wanna spend a day with a celebrity.

01:26:45 ◼   ► I kinda don't wanna bug them.

01:26:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, but they're happy.

01:26:50 ◼   ► You know? - Yeah.

01:26:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

01:26:54 ◼   ► I don't know, it would be interesting,

01:26:56 ◼   ► it would be an interesting to spend a day with somebody

01:26:59 ◼   ► like the President of the United States

01:27:02 ◼   ► the Prime Minister of Great Britain, or hey the FBI director, what the heck, that would be an

01:27:08 ◼   ► interesting day. But in terms of like celebrity, like a musician or an actor or a writer or

01:27:16 ◼   ► something like that, I don't know if I have huge, you know, huge desires in that. I'll parachute me

01:27:23 ◼   ► into wherever they're brainstorming the new Star Trek movie. Maybe I could just be a fly on the

01:27:30 ◼   ► wall there or I don't know some or somebody who made something that I really

01:27:33 ◼   ► love like let's say Joss Whedon maybe who you know Buffy is my favorite TV

01:27:38 ◼   ► show ever and I don't know what he's doing and I might catch him on a bad day

01:27:42 ◼   ► where he's just sort of like sitting on the couch watching reruns but that would

01:27:46 ◼   ► be an interesting person to have a conversation with since he's created

01:27:48 ◼   ► some stuff that I really love but I don't know I'm not a celebrity person I

01:27:55 ◼   ► guess I I don't know I always find that that awkward whenever I see famous

01:27:59 ◼   ► people I kind of like want to give them their space and run away from them and not talk to them.

01:28:03 ◼   ► Even if it's in a perfectly reasonable environment where I should talk to them,

01:28:08 ◼   ► I am always like too like shy and I kind of just want to- when I saw George Lucas eating lunch I

01:28:13 ◼   ► just was like my gift to you George Lucas is I'm not going to bother you. Because if I didn't

01:28:17 ◼   ► bother you I'd have some things to say. Well that was before the prequels but let me tell you yeah.

01:28:21 ◼   ► After the prequels would you still have left him alone? I would have scowled and left him alone

01:28:28 ◼   ► I think that brings us to the end.

01:28:31 ◼   ► I think so.

01:28:33 ◼   ► If you'd like to find our show notes for this week's episode head on over to relay.fm/upgrades/77.

01:28:40 ◼   ► Thank you so much for listening as always.

01:28:42 ◼   ► If you'd like to support us you can support our lovely sponsors, the great people over

01:28:46 ◼   ► at MailRoute, FreshBooks and Smile PDF Pen this week.

01:28:51 ◼   ► Thank you to them for helping us out this week.

01:28:53 ◼   ► If you'd like to find Jason online he's over at sixcolors.com, the incomparable .com and

01:28:57 ◼   ► he is @JSnell on Twitter. I am @IMyke and I write the occasional thing over on MykeWasRight.com.

01:29:06 ◼   ► If you would like to find us on the Twitter with the show, that's an interesting way to

01:29:10 ◼   ► phrase that sentence, it is @_upgradefm. Jason tweets from that account every now and then

01:29:18 ◼   ► and it's always fun to see. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next week. Until

01:29:24 ◼   ► then, say goodbye Mr. Snell.

01:29:25 ◼   ► Goodbye, Mr. Hurley.

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01:29:30 ◼   ► [ Music ]

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